Night Owl Cards

(The following card and post appeared on the Baseball Reference Blog this morning. It's my second "Card of the Week" post. I'm appreciating the chance to contribute to the site, no matter how sporadic it might be. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. It's the 86th in a series): The 1978 major league baseball amateur draft is known for a few things. The first four players drafted, led by No. 1 pick Bob Horner, went on to All-Star careers. Meanwhile, Cal Ripken Jr . wasn't selected until the second round. Ryne Sandberg wasn't picked until the 20th. But today the focus is on the fourth overall pick of that draft, pitcher Mike Morgan. There was no doubt that Morgan was going to play in the major leagues. As if to underline that statement, the team that drafted Morgan, the Oakland A's , started him in three games the very year he was drafted. The following year Morgan pitched in 13 games and had a 5.94 ERA. But instead of that being the ruin o...

(Note: This post appeared today on the Baseball Reference Blog . It's my first contribution to the "Card of the Week" feature). The design chosen each year for a baseball card set can often determine whether collectors love, hate or remain ambivalent about that set. One aspect of design is how that design enhances or interferes with the photo on the card. Some of you might know that the 2008 Topps set was notable for a particular design flaw. The “bump” that featured the Topps logo and jutted into the top portion of the card photo affected how Topps displayed the photos on its cards. Often, the photo images were shrunken so the player’s head would not be covered up by the Topps “bump.” That particular set got me thinking about whether there were other sets in which the design forced Topps’ hand as to how it displayed its photos. I quickly scanned Topps flagship sets over the years. I found out that, in most sets since Topps went with photography over illustration...